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Quotes by English Authors
"One can't prescribe books, even the best books, to people unless one knows a good deal about each individual person. If a man is keen on reading, I think he ought to open his mind to some older man who knows him and his life, and to take his advice in the matter, and above all, to discuss with him the first books that interest him."
"I do think you feel a little bit like you are preying on people's lives."
"A man man may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him prisoner."
"That's what show business is, sincere insincerity."
"I do remember being a fan of the Marvel characters and not liking the DC characters at all."
"What makes the prospect of death distinctive in the modern age is the background of permanent technological and sociological revolution against which it is set, and which serves to strip us of any possible faith in the permanence of our labours. Our ancestors could believe that their achievements had a chance of bearing up against the flow of events. We know time to be a hurricane. Our buildings, our sense of style, our ideas, all of these will soon enough be anachronisms, and the machines in which we now take inordinate pride will seem no less bathetic than Yorick's skull."
"When a woman behaves like a man why doesn't she behave like a nice man?"
"Sometimes the problem is not the people in the band, but the people around the band."
"Better to choose a limit capriciously than to have none."
"In cases where every thing is understood, and measured, and reduced to rule, love is out of the question."
"The main essentials of a successful prime minister are sleep and a sense of history."
"Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."
"I believe absolutely in love being the central motive force of the universe."
"Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission."
"As a lover or a dipsomaniac, I've no doubt of your being a most fascinating specimen. But as a combiner of forms, you must honestly admit it, you're a bore."
"Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind."
"It is so difficult - at least, I find it difficult - to understand people who speak the truth."
"Never reveal all of yourself to other people; hold back something in reserve so that people are never quite sure if they really know you."
"The white man's blood and bones have begotten this bronze race, and bequeathed to it in some degree qualities, tendencies, capabilities, such as are the inheritance of the highest order of human animals."
"The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart."
"For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure."
"The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; type people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power."
"What a gulf between impression and expression! That's our ironic fate-to have Shakespearean feelings and (unless by some billion-to-one chance we happen to be Shakespeare) to talk about them like automobile salesmen or teen-agers or college professors. We practice alchemy in reverse-touch gold and it turns into lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash."
"I however don't go to clubs to show off and to be seen, and certainly not to make statements. I just want to be able to quietly watch a band."
"Few women care to be laughed at and men not at all, except for large sums of money."
"But I don't remember. I won't remember. Memory is an act of will, and so is forgetting."
"I had gotten to a place where I truly believed everything I was called: 'not sexy,' 'not funny,' 'too intense,' desperate.' All those labels they gave me, I took them because there wasn't a trace of my true self left."
"It seems odd that as far as I know nobody has yet been murdered for having too perfect a character! And yet perfection is undoubtedly an irritating thing!"
"I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellowmen. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness, to death."
"She's very selfish. Not exactly self-centered, but totally indifferent to everyone and everything. Don't you agree?' 'I don't think that's possible,' said Mr Satterthwaite, slowly. 'I mean everyone's interest must go somewhere."
"Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them."
"Sometimes the crime follows the punishment, which only serves to prove the foresight of the Great God."That's what my grandmother used to say," said Brutha automatically."Indeed? I would like to know more about this formidable lady."She used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the day," said Brutha."A most complete understanding of the nature of mankind,."
"If you have heard that I am wild, you can contradict the rumour,(...) I am tame. I am quite tame; I am about the tamest beast that crawls. I drink too much of the same kind of whisky at the same time every night. I even drink about the same amount too much. I go to the same number of public-houses. I meet the same damned women with mauve faces. I hear the same number of dirty stories- generally the same dirty stories. You may assure my friends, Inglewood, that you see before you a person whom civilization has thoroughly tamed."
"If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not."
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